Pamela is having nightmares. They’re nothing she hasn’t experienced before. She’d been traumatized years ago. Normally they wouldn’t be anything dangerous, but she IS behind the wheel and running out of the road. (At least that’s what a Batman-like figure seems to be saying to her.) Things aren’t likely to get much less dangerous for Pamela in Poison Ivy #5. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues her road trip with the appealing villain and would-be savior on her way out to Seattle. In the fifth issue, artist Marcio Takara once again brings the art to the page for the bulk of an issue that opens with a strange, dreamy fugue drawn by Brian Level. Color comes to the page courtesy of Arif Prianto.

It was years ago. Panela was getting pumped full of something in a hospital bed. The guy responsible was a real monster. Poison Ivy’s genesis was not a happy occurrence. It was awful. The visions of it are understandable. They probably shouldn’t be happening while she’s traveling, though. Luckily enough, Batman’s there with her. He’ll know what to do. Granted…he’s only a hallucination, but he’s on her side, so that counts for something, right? The rest of her past begins to catch up with her in other ways as well as she makes the journey west towards destiny and something more. 

Wilson is increasing the pressure on Poison Ivy as the series continues. She might have seemed like some kind of vengeful goddess in the first issue, but real darkness and illness is overcoming her in so many ways. The addition of a hallucinatory Batman is a clever suggestion that she really IS looking to tap into the hero that she wants to be. Wilson has allowed that illness to become more and more prominent in the course of the past three or four issues. Now Poison Ivy’s illness is positively overwhelming as she finds herself face-to-face with that past that has made her what she is. Wilson IS giving her protagonist a bit more of a sense of control over things as the plot nears its inevitable end, but the strength of what Wilson has Ivy up against compromises some of the progress that has been made so far.

The visual impact of the story isn’t quite as powerful with Level’s fugue as it is with Takara’s shadowy horror. The darkness of Ivy’s memories and the reality of what she’s going through are given a slippery fantasy that feels gruesome and nightmarish in places. Takara and Level maintain a sense of emotional grounding to it all from different ends. Level’s rubberiness lacks the kind of resonance that Takara’s work attained in the first four issues of the series. The nightmare end of the visuals really DO kick into overdrive this issue, so the change in tone and style of the art is not entirely jarring. It’s just not as appealing as it’s been in previous issues.

Pamela was running out of road at the beginning of the issue, but Wilson is also running out of road, narratively speaking. The central heart of what she’s exploring is spilling out all over the place, and there hasn’t been a lot of work done to keep it all carefully composed. The emotions of the story feel very real and very compelling, but any larger vision of anything beyond Pam doesn’t really seem to be in clear focus as the series approaches its sixth issue.

Grade: B